JLarson's build thread

[JLarson]

I'll try to provide a fairly detailed summary of the weekend.

Madwi arrived as planned on Thursday afternoon, and we were joined by Craig the Blessed (not from the forum, but helped me install LTH previously).

Thursday involved installation of the new fuel pump, installation of new injectors, and finishing heat shields for headers. Craig handled the fuel pump and tapped the upper plenum, Madwi handled the injectors, I tackled headers and finished connection of the oil cooler. Spirits were pretty high, jokes flew, and we all look forward to the arrival of Craig's car assembled entirely with JB weld instead of fasteners for weight reduction.

Note - and this may be important - we had to splice the injectors into the existing harness. The supposedly plug n' play connectors did not, in fact, plug n' play. More on this later.
Note 2 - The instructions with the BP kit are also outdated regarding the hardware used to secure the fuel pump in place in the fuel basket, and the hose used to connect the ports. This took several messages with Sasha to resolve because it was not an obvious solution.

[JLarson]

Friday saw the next serious complications. Currently Sasha is using Treadstone to provide the intercooler and charge piping for the kit. My intercooler arrived with the brackets welded backwards. The greatest significance of this was that what should have been a 5 minute job - bolting on an intercooler - turned into a multi hour ordeal. I ended up having to take the intercooler brackets to a machine shop where my brother kindly made use of a bridgeport to machine down my brackets. Between that and some creative uses of washers, the intercooler was installed.

Madwi tackled wiring for the new AFR and boost gauges, as well as assembling the gauge pillar.

Coolant lines were installed in the car, turbo was roughly clocked.

Rusty arrived around 8, and after a brief dinner (thanks Megan!) we mated the turbo manifold to the OEM headers. This took a bit of work. The manifold was about 1/2 inch too narrow to fit the header hole pattern. The flex pipes on the manifold do allow for some maneuvering, and we were able to seat it with a bit of effort, mostly on Rusty's part. That wrapped up the evening.

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by JARblue

What the hell? You provide nice, detailed updates when you're doing all the work yourself. Now you have a bunch of guys doing all the work for you and you post up some weak a$$ update like that?

At least post up some pictures of the work in the shower

Why do you want those pictures so bad? So that you can go and hamsterbate to them?

[Rusty]

I had a good weekend at JL's place. I learned a few things. Just wish the Z was running when I left to come home.

[JLarson]

Originally Posted by Rusty

Why do you want those pictures so bad? So that you can go and hamsterbate to them?

He calls it "hamster jacking". It's all the rage with his people - you know, furries.

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by JLarson

He calls it "hamster jacking". It's all the rage with his people - you know, furries.

[JLarson]

Saturday we accomplished a lot of the grunt work. OldGrayDog and my dad swung by to help or hang out.

-Filter was installed in place. Thanks to JC for the helpful tip of putting it in place PRIOR to trying to install the turbo. That was critical.
-Turbo was installed. Expect this to take some time, especially your first shot. You've got to push it up in place, orient the water coolant lines and feed them up through through the engine bay to hopefully where a friend (Madwi in this case) is waiting to grab them.
-Upper plenum reinstalled along with throttle bodies.
-Intercooler/charge piping installed. This is awful if you have a CMAK. Flat out my least favorite part of this job. Definitely windex your couplers to make adjustment easier. You may need to re-orient your clutch line - this is not documented in the instructions. You will probably need to remove a bolt from your lower engine mount and reverse it to gain a precious 3/4s of an inch of space to orient Frank (the frankenstein pipe) to work around the CMAK. If you do this early, you will save many hours and a lot of frustration. I did not do this early.
-A lot of smaller work accomplished - running BOV's, getting those in place, prepping for exhaust piping.

[JLarson]

Sunday was final touches.
-Fast Intentions crash bar installed. Complications here, again because of the brackets. Did get it in place.
-Ports on BOV's blocked off per instructions.
-Exhaust installed.
-Waste gate lines shielded and run over top of the trans.
-Did a once over on whole system, tightening everything down, making sure everything was in place.
-Start up. Not glorious. Car starts, runs rough for a moment and dies.

****.

[JLarson]

Troubleshooting so far:

-Loaded in rough tune from RT Tuning using EcuTek.
-Fuel pump turns on. We can hear it in the tank, and using EcuTek + my bluetooth module, we can start it and keep it running.
-Removed upper plenum, checked fuel rail. Fuel rail is definitely pressurizing (shot Madwi in the face when disconnected).
-Injectors appear to be correctly seated. Rail seats snugly, with no evidence it's pushing up anywhere.
-Reconnected everything. Still rough start, idles horribly, and dies.
-MAF sensor port appears to be incorrect. Rusty had noticed during install of passenger MAF that it appeared Treadstone had welded the MAF port off center from the pipe cut out. This was hand filed to allow MAF to install correctly. MAF does not appear to seal in slot - seal does not fit. Used silicon around the large gap just to rule it out. Car still does not start correctly.
-Rechecked all post-MAF connections. Nothing easily identified as a vacuum leak. Nothing obvious missing or disconnected.
-EcuTek detects no codes. AFR gauge is maxing out (showing 18:1, highest it can display). Maybe injectors?

More on this later. Cancelled my scheduled tune tomorrow till I can figure this out.

Huge thanks to both Madwi and Rusty for coming out, working with me on a huge project! They were both amazing! I learned a lot from them (and have some new tools to purchase on my list).

Edit: Insult to injury - my Quickjack is locked in the air. I cannot reconnect my quick connect fittings so I'll have to call them later today to find out how to handle this.

[gbrettin]

Man! you guys were busy! Very nice progress.

[Spooler]

Looks like you had fun. You need to smoke test it. You have an air leak somewhere running an AFR of 18:1. Make sure you fuel pressure is adjusted properly.
Solidus bought a smoke tester. You may want to get with him on where he got it.

[Spooler]

Solidus, Al, has a link to a boost leak tester on Instagram. User name is : tunerexic
You may want to PM him for more info.

[JLarson]

Originally Posted by Spooler

Looks like you had fun. You need to smoke test it. You have an air leak somewhere running an AFR of 18:1. Make sure you fuel pressure is adjusted properly.
Solidus bought a smoke tester. You may want to get with him on where he got it.

Will do. Mind is going crazy trying to figure out where a leak would be, but that would absolutely make sense.

Work is cramping my style - I just want to troubleshoot!

[Spooler]

Originally Posted by JLarson

Will do. Mind is going crazy trying to figure out where a leak would be, but that would absolutely make sense.

Work is cramping my style - I just want to troubleshoot!

Do you have an air compressor? It is a good size leak. It shouldn't be hard to find.

[solidus]

Originally Posted by JLarson

Will do. Mind is going crazy trying to figure out where a leak would be, but that would absolutely make sense.

Work is cramping my style - I just want to troubleshoot!

Lol! I got the boost leak guage on Amazon and I made the smoke tester with PVC . The boost leak tester is something we should all have. For our kit it's easy. Put it on the first charge pipe off the turbo then air it up 5 psi at a time. My peak boost is 21psi so I tested to 25psi just for kicks. After you air up and the air pump isnt running listen for the hiss. The smoke tester I just used 3" pipe with caps, drilled compressor fitting holes and threaded them in. Filled it with baby oil and an old cotton sock then used a soldering iron plugged in with a harbor freight hand pump. Sealed up the cap with electrical tape and sealed the container with epoxy. Smoked up the garage so bad testing GF made me come inside and watch 600lb life. ( That's punishment for me.)